N's car sold for twice what she expected. She put it up on craigslist and the first offer hit eighteen minutes later. Something like twenty people emailed her in the next couple of hours.
My coworker has a Honda Insight. He said cars like his are selling for $15K -- only a thousand or so less than when he bought it new, seven years ago.
We've all noticed a *lot* more people riding bikes, especially people without helmets, on '80's bikes, all awkward with their knees out. Exciting times... I need to get my recumbent finished.

We're trying to get the old house ready to sell. It needs a lick of paint and an atom bomb dropped on the garage. The big question is: make it look all pretty or just expect that the people who buy it are going to demolish it and put up an apartment complex? I'd say that's not unlikely, given the way things are going hereabouts -- the weirdest psychology I've ever seen. If houses are selling, well, build apartment buildings and make a profit! If houses aren't selling, well, buy them cheap and build apartment buildings and make a profit! There's something wrong with that equation, and I'm glad I'm on the selling side rather than the buying side.

Work had a graceful layoff. Fritz won't be glad to hear this, but they terminated 130 positions (out of roughly 10,000) and in most cases took the people whose jobs were gone and found them new ones in the company. We now have a digital designer, which is sort of odd, given that we're, y'know, The Analog Company. But hey. I just thought it was surprisingly civilized -- they said he can work where he currently does for as long as he wants, but if he wants to start working where we are, they'd be happy.
Still, the storm clouds are never good to see.

I think, as I've said before, we are living in the tail end of what we'll look back upon as a golden age of sorts, one where Stuff was almost free. Kirk bought a tripod for $6 the other day -- full-size, with every adjustment you can think of. I bought a USB hub for $10. In neither case are the *materials* that cheap. We both know this is part of the US selling itself to another country, trading money for cheap stuff, no differently than one company doing a gradual leveraged buyout of another. For the people involved, it's very nice until the buyout is complete and the changes start happening.

Car's broken still/again. Needs to go to the shop, because I don't have either the experience or documentation to even begin to diagnose the problem. I bet they'll say the head needs replacing, but I sure hope not. Urk.

Last night I read "Nacky Patcher and the curse of the dry-land ships" (I believe) and it reminded me, perhaps inevitably, of "Holes". Young Adult book about ships in the desert, full of grim power-mad authorities and flawed people trying to make their lives work. One of the weird things was that both the protagonist and his ... henchman? assistant? had a crippled limb. Maybe that's just symbolic of their similarly crippled mindsets. Anyway, slow start, depressing, but once it got going it was excellent.

Right now I'm working through an *enormous* book about medieval technology. It's full of little gems that probably aren't important to anyone else. Roman ploughs only cut a trough, but medieval ones could actually lift and turn the earth. Why is that important? Because over time, you form serious ridge/valley formations on your fields, allowing farmers to plant on the crest in wet years or in the valley in dry ones, which greatly increased their yields. Stuff like that. Useless (unless I get stranded on a desert island that just happens to have oxen and iron ore) but endlessly fascinating.

What all.

It snowed yesterday -- intensely, although not for long. There was a bit of time where it was blue skies and sunny and still snowing. We went to Home Depot and bought a buttload of stuff, and came home and deployed a lot of it: repairing loose electrical boxes, removing obsolete window sconces, things like that. I have to figure out how to etch the bathroom floor, next.

Today we went to the old house, mowed the lawn, dumped half a ton of dirt in the flower beds, seeded them with wildflowers. I have to get over there tomorrow and turn on the sprinkler system. I'll get a bike ride in today, then back to HD to buy plywood and hardiboard for the mad sci hut and bathroom, respectively. If I have time I'd like to get the cantenna built around the big tub of basil oil we found at Big Lots yesterday.

The recumbent is ready to start welding, but I have to build a frame jig. I think I know how. Still don't know how I'm going to route the chainline. I'll need an old Hyperglide cogset and thrashed freewheel, though. Too many variables to decide until I have the first frame mocked up.

So far behind.
Lessee. Focus windshield got a crack in it while I was borrowing it, just sitting in the driveway. This was during the 89 degree - to snowing and freezing -- and back to 85 degrees, in two days, bit. Yeah.

My car still reeks of hot oil. I think the whatever problem is still there. I don't know what to do about it.

The workshop has squirrels living in the walls. I have ripped off a big chunk of siding and am trying to find inexpensive siding to put up in its place.

The recumbent is getting closer to happening: I now have the front end cut out from the next door neighbor's kid bike, and the back end of Dad's old LeTour that David sprinted into a VW, and am getting ready to start welding the main frame.

I'm playing with cantennas, so hopefully at some point I'll be able to get internet in the workshop via a beamed directional antenna. In an ideal world I'd build a second one based off the directv dish on the garage, and build an automated netstumbler setup. That'd rock.

Mostly just tired, though.

Catch-up:
I put the new valve gasket on the Soob. I'm not convinced it's the problem, but the car's working, which is nice. It even had the 'check engine' light off for a little bit.
I went by Altitude Steel and got some more 1/2" square tubing. I'd like to like them, since they're so convenient, but they're expensive. It annoys me that I'm buying crap they're going to melt down, digging it out of the scrap bundles, and they're charging me $1/pound for it. I'll just have to keep going to K&K. Grumble. Anyway, I converted all the newly-acquired tubing into curves for the base of the bathroom sink, the support for the glass shelf on which the towels will some day sit. Lots of mandrel-bending around a bit of cedar from a fence slat that I cut into a disc. I'm not yet good at compensating for welding curvature: I set the whole thing up flat, tack-welded along one side, flattened it back out because the tack-welds twisted it all, then turned it over and ran nice beads along that side to hold it together permanently -- and it twisted up again, like a dry leaf. Sigh. I'll try jumping on it for a while: I SHALL BE VICTORIOUS. It'll look good anyway.
Rode out to Golden along Ralston Creek, back via the Clear Creek, along the Giant Spider Trail -- out at Blunn Lake, I've found two enormous spiders and I'm always looking for more. The wind was consistent and fairly strong: headwind all the way out, grinding up hills, then blazing back along the CC. I saw two people dredging the CC beside where the offagain-onagain Cabela's is supposed to be: one with a jet-dredge, the other with a high-sider. The bike path is rerouted through where Cabela's is supposed to be, on a lovely bit of concrete, but it's kind of weird because in one direction, the old route is closed and the concrete dug up, but in the other direction the new route is all fenced off. Either way, it's offroad. (Speaking of which, a couple days ago I rode up to Brighton and they've finally rebuilt the road under, uh, hm, basically 54th and Franklin, where the Sherman Tank lives and the old Globeville waste treatment plant has been turned into a park, so you can climb around in the sediment ponds -- thrill a second!)
I made tuna fish sammiches and we bought a kite but as soon as we got home the wind died. Forsooth. So instead we're making duck-and-stuff soup and reading comic books and I'm researching how to set up the vapor barriers underneath/behind the tile in the bathroom. Thrill-a-second indeeeeeed.